When Victor Hugo was facing a tight schedule for The Hunchback of Notre Dame, he asked his valet to confiscate his clothes so that he wouldn't leave the house.

During cold days, Hugo would wrap himself in a blanket while writing. According to his wife, while writing The Hunchback of Notre Dame, he even purchased a "huge grey knitted shawl which swathed him from head to foot, locked his formal clothes away so that he would not be tempted to go out and entered his novel as if it were a prison."

It took Hugo over half a year of non-stop work to finish the three-volume novel.